play this game, they play the most amazing, sophisticated game i have no doubt that high-school students and college students could save this world. i seen them do it. air relentlessly compassion way left no stone unturned. time and time again they found reasonable, practical ways of doing that. they simply refused to not save the planet no matter how fears the fiction, of fiendishly clever the interlocking problems . there would not stop until they say best. so it gives me great hope and also knowing that every child that comes along could be the next president, the next cure for cancer. we would never know. so you have to make every possible effort for every possible child so that they can help us fix the mess we left. we have left them a huge problem

. we don't have enough time ourselves. they have to come along. we're giving them a huge burden. as seen in to help us save us in themselves. so i hope that the adults can to keep to that. of course it is hopeful that people like the pentagon and we have shown the phone with the united nations, looking into it. we are about done for the evening. we want to thank you and park roads books here for having me. the documentary. my literary agent. for making this possible think

you for coming. i appreciated. [applause] update. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here on line. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share anything ec easily by clicking share of the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. book tv strains live for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> a panel on civil liberties and security is next on book tv. robert h., author of the luge is a power and into the gregory, author of the power of habeas corpus in america talks about the protection of civil liberties in the u.s. this is about an hour and 40 minutes.

[applause] >> thank you, david. good evening, everybody. welcome. a tremendous honor to share the stage this evening. two of my favorite people. i admire their work enormously. this is a used topic that we have to cover tonight. a lot of aspects of it. it will be a real challenge to be able to cover even some of those. i have warned that i will be holding a tight schedules. i want to have a good discussion following. hello. well, the association goes back many years. starting with the protection of this book in his first published

by oxford university press and remained in print ever since. we were honored to be able to issue the 25th anniversary edition last year. your work has certainly informed a lot of the independent institute programs, the least of which was your 16 years as founding editor of the independent review. one of the examples of the way your work has really influenced us, we were a pro they the only website on the afghan of september 11th 2001 and posted a statement condemning the terrorist attacks of that morning, but also issuing a warning that the attacks not be allowed to form the basis for unprecedented new government powers which we learned, of course, directly from your book. in a few minutes could you briefly outline that thesis and

help us understand the events of the last 11 years in light of the history? >> the topic is the growth of government. from the late 19th century to the late 20th century. that growth has many causes. i start off the book by making clear that i am not offering a new favorite explanation for that complex development. it can be related and traced back to a great many changes in the nature of social and economic change during that time and changes in ideology and political changes of various sorts and so forth. but my own development of that

came in the park focused on the fact that the goal of government or that century was not slow and steady. it was instead of the sonically by big wages in the size, scope, and power of the government. and at the time i began my work on the book in the late 1970's. most of the columnists who were working were basically ignoring the profile. they were attempting to explain the long term growth of government without worrying about the exact path that followed in the course of its growth. it seemed to me after some years of reading and studying economic history in connection with this experience that ignoring the profile of the way government

had grown was missing a great deal of and understanding about why did go. and it seems to me increasingly as a continue my research that these episodes which were all focused on national emergencies such as the world wars in the great depression, those three more than any other, those episodes did not behave the way many people at the time thought that they ought to dave or how historians later mentioned they had believed. that is to say, very often when the government expanded its power and one of these emergencies there was a kind of promise, sometimes explicit, that the government would exercise extraordinary powers in order to the deal with the crisis and, but that once the

crisis the past, once it had been dealt with adequately then the government would relinquish those powers and revert to something like the status quo. that, however, had never happened. and it led me to formulate a new version of an old idea which i called the ratchet phenomenon of the ratchet effect which is the idea that in the national emergencies the government would grow abruptly in size, scope, and power, after the emergency had clearly passed it would, indeed, relinquish some of the new powers, but not all the study upward path for various reasons. it would grow along the smooth path, abruptly increased,

partially retrench, and then resume growth along a higher trajectory so that each one of these crisis periods in effect shifted the size, scope, and power of government to a higher level and created a higher base line from which it would grow abruptly on the occasion of the next so i attempted to research the facts of history and find out other related to this pattern. became more and more convinced that there was the logic behind the effect and that it involved not simply the kinds of changes that other economists said identified such as fiscal changes, changes in government spending or tax revenue or borrowing which all increase abruptly dried international emergencies, but more important in involves changes in institutions.

pass new laws. exercise of a society. it would retain some of those powers after the crisis the past and another dimension of the crisis was that in that course of passing through these episodes people's thinking would be changed. people have a habit of getting used to things that they must endure for some time, particularly for years on a. in having done use to them, even if they objected to the conditions before, they were accepting a them readily. each crisis softens them up, as it were, to tolerate a larger government, more powerful government, a government with a wider reach. and that was the logic i found pouring out.

and when the attacks of september 11th happened, be in to receive calls from reporters who had some familiarity. asking me what i thought the effect would be. i said that it would probably be the same as it had been before, that in the wake of these attacks people being more fearful, people being uncertain about what was going on or how they should deal with it would turn to the state. the state would take advantage of this concession as it were, the resistance to the growth of government, and the upshot would be another upward ratchet in the size, scope, and power of government. unconvinced that is exactly what has happened during the 12 years since the september 11th attack. and so i believe current history

and recent history fits the pattern of the preceding century very well in terms of its logic. you need specifics, a unique personality. many differences. the enter logic, what is driving this growth and episodic manner remains the same. >> we have certainly observed it on steroids. anthony is hot off the press with his new book from cambridge university, a power of habeas corpus and american. he spent the past several years becoming experts in habeas corpus. your book reflects that. it has been endorsed by scholars and civil liberties leaders

across the board and it has been very, very high praise and rightfully so. what about habeas corpus make you think that it was an important thing for you to spend the last few years of your life on? what about it can help us in our fight for liberty in the midst of war and terror? >> well, during the bush years of the war on terror i was, like many other americans, horrified by a number of practices. the most fundamental liberties, the right of habeas corpus.

like many other civil libertarians, i believe that the legal history of habeas corpus would be on our side. that if i just looked into it could, but in her tired silver bullet argument for there were doing. research more in the paper became a book. personally i lot rockier and less clear-cut than that. starting in england which is more important than in my soon to a lot of people and the estates. if the supreme court decision

often discussed in was legal history to try to the chairman how ibm's carper should apply here in the u.s. states because the common law was carried over. in the english history, the history of habeas corpus was not -- was kind of elusive. established by world court to exercise control over of a court and to bring detainees. they did not have this unambiguous pro freedom that we attach to it today. one of the -- and the parliamentarians for arguing for habeas corpus there would say habeas corpus is always guaranteed. no mention spend two days in jail without cause. that was wishful thinking.

that's not what it always did or what it always guaranteed. when parliament took over after the english civil war, there were just as bad as the king. and i say this might be kind of a downer, but i soon came to the conclusion that the golden age if there was one might have been in the colonial era and the british colony's and north america where it is corpus' seem to have more of an idealistic application. when the colonists instead of this measure established it purely for the good reasons. once the constitution was ratified and have the power to suspend habeas corpus. look at the suspension clause which restricts how congress could suspend habeas corpus. thomas jefferson, why should

they ever be allowed to a suspended. some authority. jefferson himself tried to spend it when he was president might the parliamentarians. something of a hypocrite on this not the first and not the last. you see in the antebellum para habeas corpus being used to it retrieves leaves. the supreme court handed one of the most revolutionary aspects of american had been corpus. an american, states able to issue a news corpus rights to a question federal imprisonment which is a radical states right. the covenants using habeas corpus to question state government.

protecting the rights of the detained in the civil war and the world wars, especially world war ii when the supreme court did eventually get around to determine that a loyal citizen should not be detained. no in the 20th-century most of the discussion of habeas corpus, critical. this go below critical review of state conviction to be where is back the day of is usually brought to bear before someone went to trial might get changed in the subway. it was used mostly after trial and would continue to be relevant in the classical cases of executive attention power. we see that since

september 11th with incredible claims of the authority who under bush despite what the courts to done and certainly under obama many of the stock of the court decisions that seem to vindicate the rights of the detained. the executive branch has found a way to circumvent the spirit of that. the exception at guantanamo. they're quite a few prisoners that the government admits it has no evidence against. they are not a threat, would it can release them for one reason or another. and been there for our war 11 years. the treatment is outrageous. we have a long way from this idea of today's to 11 years. siding with the obama administration, and with the nba and the indefinite detention

power of the executive to detain people without due process, a lot of people are outraged. this is entirely unprecedented. unfortunately it is not. where i do see hope is throughout this entire history there were people, idealists who saw the legal jargon and technicalities of law it is wrong. putting someone in detention without giving reason. shoddy with your procedures. and so i think the whatever the courts to doing, whatever congress, where the presidents to, i have no reason to believe the next president will be much better his respect.

we will reveal many is a revolution in thinking. the american people need to become more focused on the ideal . these and i just statutes or court decisions. their flesh and blood people that are being mistreated and stripped of the human rights. it's an outrage, and it has to stop. >> well, the country was founded by people who held those ideals. such deals, but don't the revolution there were carried on. the principals came from the natural tennant. all men are created equal. we are in doubt any of the with the rights to life, liberty, and property i think many of us have

became blown away without completely they have been abandoned in the aftermath of september 11th. shocked to see how readily so many of abandon these principles and then replace them with the utilitarian view that for some reason it's okay with those unfortunate to be living in the wrong place at the wrong time should be subjected to of retribution for a dense. there being ruled by people they don't want to be the rule with and don't have anything to do with any terrorist attacks. as we talked about earlier, we've seen the growth of government power and loss of liberty. the tailing further in the most recent book from the institute, divisions of power, new exploration of the state, war command economy.

yet many people argue that the ideals of the founders are irrelevant. nonintervention. a new modern age. we have to be realistic about it . the foreign policy, so consistent with those ideals, those founding principles, the natural tenants and deal well with modern reality. >> that's the big question. and quite sure that u.s. foreign policy would have to be changed

from where it has become. to some extent of the passenger more ever since the spanish-american war. particularly since world war ii. even on the eve of world war ii, many americans still took seriously the india that the united states ought properly to conduct its affairs power. in table itself in the conflicts within or between of the country's. the life of the american people. should it become involved in of a people's quarrels in attempts to rectify the hills of the

whole world, it would only result in making americans themselves worse off, less free, less prosperous, and more reaction from abroad to the actions it might initiate. and yet through a series of occasions the government has again and again and again abandoned that classical stand. george washington and county of thomas jefferson, their involvement and alliances in other people's quarrels.

one can say that this is ben 100 percent failure. try to get it across. the effect on liberty on the american people is an inverse. highly negative. every time the united states said out to involve itself unnecessarily, it was almost always been -- unnecessarily. they could have refrained from involvement. the ultimate results for the american people was a loss of liberty. in must use power to make those changes. the government must get the

resources. the reservoir, the ordinary people, the working people, the creative people, the of entrepreneurs to create the real wealth you mean we are the ones who must provide the wherewithal for the government to act as a crusader come as a savior will whenever any quarrel breaks out anywhere in the world now matter how manifestly and related to the interest of the american people in general very few americans can tell me a reason why the united states should involve itself in the civil war in syria one case after another

and make the same commentary about it. yet this has become not an extraordinary -- extraordinary activity, but basic operating procedure. the increasing degree, the pentagon which is very much a foreign policy maker now. all of the pentagon for installations, hundreds and hundreds of bases, located all over the world, intimidate foreigners strongmen that it chooses to support today that it may choose to turn on tomorrow, of course, all of this meddling, all of this chronic interventionism has not made the american people better off. and did not say never.

maybe an instance in which one can make a positive case for it, but it is the exception to the general. and so the main thing that will have to happen would be an alteration of what you might call the present defaults stance of american foreign policy which is the idea that america ought to be involved in everybody's troubles all over the world. that's the basic desire or capacity to act. it misstates the idea that one knows enough to act intelligently with the reality of the vast ignorance, even the people in the state department and pentagon about what is going on. tickets us involved in. >> and again and again and again from which it is very difficult to extract. sometimes we end of with what is

representative of surgical action of some kind in which there we are decades or even more time later, and some times the state department and pentagon. world war two ended in 1945. .. all the things that make real politics so different from ideaistic politics.

>> i think two basic sets of rationales we get for going to war or intervening. one is the safety, the security, the well-being, and the freedom of the american people, and the other is the freedom and well-being of foreigners. and you'll often see this calculus come to player, where they'll say we'll make these sack re faces for the sake -- sacrifices for foreigners but we're doing it because we have to for us, and in every case these calculations of made by governments and by politicians who, in this area, no less than in any other area, are acting off of self-interest and prevaricate and who are not always acting out of the motive

they say, as bob suggested. i think that it's clear, if you look at most of these wars, that the rationales given for american security don't pass the smell test. this was true with the iraq war, which is one reason they like to shift to the other rationale, that it was to liberate the iraqi people. and some people were better off after saddam, but not all of them. perhaps maybe likely not most of them. not the christian groups or the sunni groups or the women or many others who have been displaced and millions who lost their homes and had to move, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands who have died as a result of the war. on a smaller scale, we see the libya war that president obama participated in, that was sold almost entirely on the basis of

liberating the libyan people from gadhafi, who was indeed an awful dictator and the u.s. should have never supported him, either. and yet what happens is there is this lack of attention span, where americans are very excited about the war and what it is supposedly done for these people, and then they stop paying attention, and they don't realize that it's unleashed this horror against black libyans and immigrants who are being put in detention camps. they don't really look into the circumstancal allies of the u.s. and libya, which were al i'd affiliates, and this happens over and over, and so americans seem tokingle between these two rationales and it's a very convent and very useful recipe for constant intervention, because a lot of americans don't believe so much in the national

security threats as they're presented, but they really do want to help foreigners, and a lot of other americans are less concerned about that. they have part of that america first mentality, but if they feel threatened, even if the threat is as small or minuscule as the terror threat, they're willing to sacrifice unbelievable amounts of their liberty and they're willing to go along with major wars. i think that the solution is an idealologial and philosophical and the problem is the american people have come to live in the seat of what is currentsly the world empire and americans don't make particularly good imperialists because they notoriously failed geography for one thing.

they know nothing about these cultures, and they think they know everything, and most people think the fighting in iraq ended before it did, or that the fighting in afghanistan is more muted than it is. they don't have any idea the extent to which obama has continued, in some cases built upon, the bush policies, and just as important, war, and intervention, which has been the main impetus behind government growth and the biggest issues in terms of all of the effects abroad and at home and on our security and our freedom, these should be -- these issues, as collected together, should be regarded the number one issue, or at least up there. and i fear that except in the moments of hysteria or great patriotic pride, the american

people kind of tune out and no longer think the war is even important, whether or not they support it. it's a minor issue. so you have people voting on the basis of everything else imaginable. you have a lot of people who dislike the foreign policy intellectually but don't regard it as a high priority. they regard the talking points of the week. they regard what the obama or romney campaigns are hurling at each other as important, and some of the stuff is very important, but much of it, frankly, is rather trivial compared to the life or death matters wrapped up in intervention in war, and by life or death i mean life or death of thousands or hundreds of thousands of flesh and blood people as well as the life or death of american liberty. >> thank you. let's focus back home now. the recent revelations by edward

snowden have underscored what many others have been trying to issue, and that's now very well documented that the federal government is capturing and storing every american's phone calls, e-mails, outside of all mail going through the usps, library uses, commercial transactions. our cars are reporting on us, and most of us are carrying around a portable spying device than the federal government can turn on and eavesdrop and record any conversation going on in the vicinity. in short, every activity of every aspect of every one of our lives every day is being captured and being stored in gigantic databases where it can be mined anytime they like to build a dossier against anybody. yet despite this extraordinary violation of our privacy, as the recent boston bombings showed,

it's not securing us any safety. bob, your book, "neither liberty nor safety." fear ideology and the greg -- growth of government, demonstrates this is a false tradeoff between freedom and security and you show how the u.s. is increasing interventions, reduce our civil and economic liberties as well as our prosperity and our genuine security. one of our friends and directors, who grew up in germany during world war ii, was remarking that today is the of 69th anniversary of the attempt to kill hitler in his bunker, and despite the almost total police state in germany, they did not know of the plot in advance so it was pointless. a majority of americans -- i think it's still majority of

americans -- think it's okay for the u.s. government to be spying on americans. the general attitude seems to be, don't have anything to hide so it's okay. so, what is wrong with the government having all of this information? and if they don't need it, how would we stay safe in the absence when there are all these threats about us. how do we safeguard against dong -- domestic threats and retaining our essential freedom. anthony, let's start with you. >> well, i think it's a mistake to look at this as a balancing issue, because we know how the state always wants to tip the scales toward itself. every state has its own institutional tendency toward totalitarianism so it's a monopoly on league force and every state in the world is con trained mostly by just lack of

resources and by what the people will put up with. so looking at it as a balance is dangerous. i think it's also important to have some perspective about the threat. the boston bombing was horrific, it was an act of mass murder, serial murder, and mass maiming and lots of people condemn it. but if there were ten such bombings every day in the united states, you'd still be more likely to die or be injured in a car crash. so, it's important to keep in mind what liberties you think are negotiatable to try to deal with this threat. even the year of 9/11, you were far more likely to be killed in a normal street murder or a normal pedestrian homicide. and there were at least a degree of things that that americans learned to put up with to deal

even with murders. so i think we need to assess the threat a lot more responsibly. during the cold war, of thent union has tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. ed had a dangerous ideology that in europe and in asia and elsewhere began to just take over the globe, and still, there were limits. still americans look back at things the fbi did, at the height of the cold war, and found them intollable -- intolerable and that led to reforms in the late '70s that were completely thrown out by the last two administrations. and still there was a lie. we all grew up in an era -- i grew up dish was very young at the end of the cold war but i remember torture, deattention toes, surveillances, the things the soviets did. the u.s. didn't always adhere to the ideals that it claimed to, but these were seen, anyway, as

aberrations, they were embarrassments and not the policies that were just simply embraced, and the surveillance we're talking about truly is unprecedented, and i am very careful about that word because very few things in politics are. but this is. it goes' -- i don't think the people in charge are as evil as the totalitarian rulers of the past, but in terms of the technologyical. of the infrastructure, it's something those people could only have dreamt it, and whether someone trust this president to keep your safe or the next president, you have to keep in mind that as bob has eloquently and persuasively shown, the state rarely cuts back, and when it does, it does it all the way, and this conflict with

terrorism, unlike with the german and the japanese and the communist, there's no point where they say, enough is enough, we won. bin laden is dead. there will always be terrorists, especially if the is is meddling all over the world and making people angry. so whatever you might think of this particular administration you should be horrified, and in fact the mere fact that this administration is overseeing this policy, regardless of what you think of any of the other policies, should probably change your mind about this administration if you look upon it favorably. >> bob? do you have anything to add about our wonderful nsa state and how -- >> well, i want to -- anthonyys judgment that i believe what has been revealed recently truly is

unprecedented. the power of the government, with current technology, to know where we are, and to a very high degree what we're doing every single minute of the day and night, is the stuff of which novels might have been made but it would have been too ridiculous for any novelist to embrace. it would have required to great 0 suspension of belief by the readers, and a reality that grows steadily worse. there is now a huge industry valued at something in the neighborhood of 80 to $100 billion annually. we don't really know because it's black budgets. and the people in this industry, which involves hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even

millionsed of employees of i.t. companies, are working fulltime to strengthen, to widen, to intensify, all the techniques already developed, to know even more about every one of us and, endearing everyone else on the earth that they can know about. and with modern technology, most people are in line to be watched with a degree of scrutiny that no one dreamed of until quite recently. now, so what you might say? indeed, many americans are saying, so what? i don't care. that i will say is an extraordinarily stupid attitude to take toward it. the fact you don't think you

have done anything wrong is quite irrelevant. anytime it serves the purposes of the people who control that power to use it against you, whether you have done anything wrong or not, count on them to use it. the fact we can't point to anyone in positions of political power to say, that individual is worse than stalin, or that individual is worse than pol pot is irrelevant. the anymore those positions are plenty bad enough to put this capacity to extremely evil use, and i don't think they'll stop when it serves their purposes they will use it and they will accompany it with their usual excuses, explanations, disinformation, and attempts to discredit anyone who opposes them.

which they're doing fulltime now with edward snowden. snowden immediately was made the issue. to divert us from the fact that the issue is what these government officials are doing to all of us. edward snowden is not the issue. the messenger is not the issue here. the message is the issue, and, yet, because of the way the media operate, closely with the highest powers in this country, they did not by accident turn the news on this matter into news about edward snowden. that is simply typical way that the government attachments to distract us to divert us from what is important, to what is unimportant, and keep us from thinking deeply and seriously about what they are doing to us. there was a time, i am quite sure -- not that this country ever had a golden age of

freedom. at it always had severe deviations from its great ideals of liberty, but there never was a time in the past when americans would have tolerated this kind of treatment, and the fact we're doing it today does not speak well of us at all. >> it is hopeful, i think, for some of us that there is beginning to be growing protests and backlash against this. today there are new revelations -- there are new revelations almost daily. came out a couple days ago about the cars being captured today in testimony before congress. it was revealed that they are in fact capturing everybody's information. it's not just terrorists. it's virtually everybody in any network whatsoever. so the revelations are unfolding. hopefully they're building to a

critical mass that will feed the kind of backlash that will do something about this. on two weeks ago on independence day, a group that organized itself using -- organized protests in 80 cities across the country, including in front of the new facility in utah, this -- the nsa is about to bring online that will hold five zeta-bytes of data and the entire worldwide web is half of the bytes so that's at incredible amount of data one has to shudder about. and every organized in front of the u.s. consulate in munich. they were rallying under the banner called, restore the force" and called for the abolition of the nsa, not reform, not scaling back. and a complete restorationf the fourth amendment.

bob, last year on our 25th 25th anniversary, you were one of the recipients of our award, together with -- do you sew parallels between the protests that lech walesa that led to the fall of theber lynn wall -- the berlin wall and the breakup of the soviet union? >> we can certainly hope to move in that direct conclusion. in germany the ideal support for the him system evaporated. there were very few true believers left and many people who went along get along, as

there are anywhere at all times. but they can build a movement to oppose the system, which had plenty of evil to justify opposition, because people were easily taken in by official excuses for what was being done to the people. the difficulty -- the greatest difficult we face today in my judgment in this country, is that a great many americans are easily taken in. i can imagine, for example, that many more protests might be mounted against this, and i hope they will be very much, and they're held at 800 cities but in every city in america. people would come out and say, no! we won't tolerate this. or anybody who supports it in office. we will oppose you with every ounce of our strength. if you support this totalitarian measure. they would take that seriously. and what they would do would be,

saying, yes, you're right, we need reforms. and then they would have committees hold hearings. and then they would drag their feet for a few years and introduce bills which would be amended out of recognition along the way, and in the course of time, you know, if the sun hasn't burned out by that time, they would come forth with their reforms. that is the nature of our system. that's how it responds to great popular pressure. i really hope that people understand that what we need in this case is not reform. we need to tear these damn things apart, brick-by-brick, and let everybody who put those bricks in place know that they are on our list, and we'll never trust them again in positions of power. if we tolerate people who would treat us that way, we'll get treated that way. and we have tolerated it this

long. we have tolerated it with faulty excuses about scares, blown out of proportion, with lies, with lies, and with lies, coming forth from our rulers, and we forgive them somehow because in some other dimensions they're doing something we like. that's very dangerous. i don't think this is an issue that is negotiable because this pore tends to tall tear yapity. i they know everything about you, they can blackmail you. so very few people so saintly they can't be blackmailed, and even if you are not blackmailable by virtue of ouropen con -- own conduct think will threaten family members or friends. the communists made a science out of working this way. they know how to get you to fall in line. and when they know so much about

everybody, they will have power in their hands to make everybody fall in line. and the only way to stop it is to tear the damn power apart, to say, we won't tolerate your maintaining this utah facility. bulldoze it. don't put it there. won't tolerate any congressional hearings. we want this thing stopped and we want it stopped now. we want the president to issue some kind of executive order terminating all work on it tonight. and not until we make that kind of demand are they going to do damn thing. they're going to shuck and jive us the way they always shuck and jive us, and we'll tolerate it. we tolerated it for decades and decades and decades, which brought to us this point. we didn't get here by accident. we made it possible. it's true that maybe not many of us are as evil as the people that kept pushing the levers,

but we made it possible because we never said, no. no more. no fooling us again. and i think this time if we don't do it, we are lost. >> anthony, we go to a lot of conferences conferences conferences and gatherings of scholars and activist and one of the most exciting things is going to these and seeing the great numbers of young people. x years ago when i was that age group and i would go to things there weren't that many of us, and now there's a lot of young people involved and they're very principled and very active and organizing in unique ways, using the power of social media, and other things, and very interested in pursuing these ideas and seeing them put into action on a principled way. so, that gives me tremendous hope and optimism.

what are you seeing? >> i see that, too. even when i was a student, the movements that were interested in these ideas was considerably smaller than it is now, and that's very encouraging. i think one reason the youth are often attracted to ideals is because they have a long-term outlook. they see that in the -- they in many cases know the short-term is not really where the greatest hope is. they don't buy as much into the fleeting political controversies of the day, and they're thinking in the long-term for the rest of their lifetime and they're hopeful in that sense. and that's the way that i'm hopeful. i'm hopeful in the long run. i think eventually something has

to give. i think that there are just too many internal contradictions in the american political system to maintain the support that it has maintained for so long. and i think that just human nature, the laws of economics that are something that the state hates to deal with and always has to, will show that many of the promises they have made to young americans about what is possible in the future of our -- a tissue of lies or disorganizations,, -- distortions, and in the long term i'm enthusiastic about what the youth see in terms of freedom being an international idea. i am an american and i certainly want freedom to be -- we could

say restored. i would like to see it flourished in america that never has. but i'd like that for the entire world. and to be honest, i think that the fixation with liberty as this american ideal, there's a lot of truth to that fixation historically, has -- it's kind of jumped the shark. i think that in the long term, i have more hope that there will be people elsewhere in the world that will take up the banner. it's the u.s. that is doing this to its open people and the rest of the world, and there are people all over the world outraged about it. now, i have no doubt that most of these people, if they were living under the most powerful, expensive state on earth, if their government had aces everywhere and claimed the authority to capture and kill anybody on earth on the sayso of the president alone, which our president claims the authority

to do, i think that would be possible. but circumstances are that's not the way, and we saw with the collapse of communism, we have seen in china certainly has far way to go, a move toward liberty, away from the depths of maoism that is inspiring in the long term. now, this might sound mesothelioma stick -- pessimistic in the short term, and i think it's important in the short term we have a sense of urgency where it most matters, and i agree with bob this is an issue, if there ever was one-that we should approach with the utmost urgency. there's no time squabble over the last political gaff. i keep up with and am interested in whatever the most controversial criminal court cases are, like anyone else,

interested in the news, interested in pop culture, and i have a lot of interest of that nature, just like all people and all americans. but when it comes to our political priorities, americans need to wake up. because this is not a matter of whether we're going live in a totally free country or not. as bob says, it was never a totally free country. that's what want but i don't think we're going to get that anytime soon. but what we have some shot at doing is averting this accelerating stampede toward the total state, and it has accelerated since 9/11. i'm hoping eventually americans will understand that even if we had a 9/11 every year it wasn't justify what is going on abroad or at home. but i also can hope, at least, that eventually the lack of attention span that some

americans -- many americans seem to have regarding these thingsing are might work in our fav, and they'll stop believing in everything that they have been told about how the u.s. government is keeping them safe by waging wars, or by spying on everyone, or claim despotic authority in detention policy and elsewhere, and i'd like to see the whole national security state as we know it abolished. i'd like to see people saying things like bob said, and like i'm saying, and it sounds to many people to be a little out there. but what is out there is what we have now. and what is even more out there is the direction that we're going, and this is unambiguous because the trajectory couldn't be more clear. and that is what is really outrageous, and just like the abolitionists during slavery, made a point that you have to be urgent about this.

garrison, william garrison, the great abolitionist, said that gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice. if you talk about reform, if you hope the next candidate will tweak things a little bit. if you're hoping that maybe the -- a congressional leaders will somehow become enlightened and make things just a little bit more protected in terms of civil liberties, then that -- if that's your stand and the state is going the direct it wants, which is total control, then that is not a compromise. that is just a guarantee we're going to keep going the same direction. it's time for people to be as urgent about this as emphatic about this, as outraged about this as they are about anything imaginable, because honestly, i have a big imagination and i have thought of all of this stuff for years, and i am -- even i was a little shocked --

not so much by the revelations but by the american response, which could be worse but it could be a hell of a lot better. >> obviously we hear at the independence to a degree it's ideological battle that has to be won, and that is what we work on producing daily and are honored to work with people like bob and anthony in fueling the ideas and providing the information that is rooted in principles, that then go out and feed the activists that affect change. we're working on creating the virtue circumstance -- virtuous circle between the ideas and the action that will lead to change in the site goetz -- to stands on scrimmage say it's not okay a little bit and certainly not okay a lot, and we must live in

these principles regardless of if it seems like we might be in a little bit danger because we're far safer as we know, and we're far under great danger with this going on. so very much appreciate you informing this. we now want to hope this up and involve the audience who is here, as well as the audience who is participating by live stream. it's very helpful if you hold the microphone horizontally, and those who are live-streaming, put fortha question, it will get conveyed to us and we'll answer it to the extent we have time available. >> elaborate a little on the point that bob made about the media. seems to me the media is private and yet it's constantly doing the bidding of the government in terms of scaring us and

manipulating our opinions to be more supportive of these kinds of interventions. i watch cnn a lot and before it bake the 24 hour jodi arias, george zimmerman network, every night that would have a piece on syria and how horrible it was and why we're horrible for not intervening. why is that and what can we do about it? >> crises attract readers. dangers attract interest, whatever in the media, and the media are constantly hyping potential dangers, i should say not dangers but potential dangers. 99% of the great threats that cnn brings up on a day-to-day basis are scarcely even real, much less things that will turn into major threats to humanity. so they're just in a sense the

mod does -- modus operandi of news and entertainment disseminators, and just as horror movies attract viewers, investigations of future horror attract viewers, too. so the media are entertaining us as a whole movie industry enter tapes us, and at the same time -- entertains us, and at the same time they're maintaining their liaison with the state, and they need that very much, because if you ever notice, the great bulk of the material that is used and report on comes to them from the kind of government official. some kind of government statement. in many ways the mainstream media are simply amplifiers. they're megaphones, to make a big noise of the same kind the government is begun by making. so everybody will know about it,

and especially know and be frightened about it. because they know very well that under current ideological conditions most americans, when frightened, will turn to the state to protect them, to save them from this imagined danger, and it's obvious that people can grow tired of this. the constant wolf-crying, after a while, so they can begin to tune out to some extent, but all one has to do is change the nature of the threat or rates the level -- raise the level of the volume a little bit and they come running again, as if they never learned before, it's almost always a trick, almost always a way to purchase their willingness to part with their own resources and particularly their own liberties.

fear this title of an article i wrote, and it's the lead article in this book. may not be a good judge of my own work but i think it's one of the best article is ever wrote in my live because it seems to me that fear is at the very foundation of how all states operate, and that can be involved in a variety of ways, but the fact of the matter is, if you want team to take leave or their senses, to not use good judgment, all you have to do is scare them. and it will work, particularly if they're predisposed to look to the state for their salvation. >> regarding the media, though, i'm very cognizant, in the nixon administration, couple of cub reporters that nobody believed that doggedly pursuit the watergate story. the vast majority of americans were completely apathetic about

it, could carry less, watergate what? but the kept pushing and digging and entrepreneurial media types and evenly brown down the -- eventually brought down the most powerful man in the country and americans in general said we don't want to trust government anymore and we want to roll it back. so there is -- today, of course, we have many more opportunities. we don't have just three networks anymore that control all of the news. there are a lot of entrepreneurs in the media. there's a lot of new media. a lot of entrepreneurial newsmen all over the world, and it's a different picture, and we can get that phenomenon again and i'm hopeful we can have an even better outcome if we get a few -- even just one really great person digging and making a career out of making sure that we're not apathetic, that we pay

attention to it, we get the story and we understand why it's important and as a result of this and hopefully said by principled arguments, really change the culture. >> do you want to say anything about media? >> briefly. there's specific ropes the mainstream media are so in bed with the state. a lot of conservatives talk about the liberal media and there's a little truth to that, and a lot of liberals talk about the corporate media and there's truth to that. but really it's the state media, and it is true that it's nominally private, but it is kind of private in a fascist sense. a relationship and it's a very tight relationship. of you want access to the white house, if you want access to the war, you'd better play nice, and that alone goes a long way in explaining all of this, and furthermore, it's true that

there is all of these independent media erupting, and one thing that gives me some hope is it's breaking down this nonsensical left-right spectrum that the state just loves, because divide and conquer has been the resort, the strategy of rulers and other villains throughout history, and people need to stop giving them this whole red-team/but-team mentality and stop lining up behind the talking points of the week, and realize that although different people have different opinions about depth issues and people are different culturally, and in any given political issue you might see them as your adversary, if people keep thinking their enemy is the next door neighbor and obama is their

saviour, and instead of seeing the near identical nature of all of these politicians we're going to have a lot of trouble. people need to snap out of it and stop spending time arguing over relative trivialities. as least for now because this is real ya an urgent matter. >> questions? >> you may have briefly alluded to this but one of the things, reading another unprecedented change has been the government -- the federal law system becomes more and more complex, and intricate, and intervening into more and more areas of activity, that the government could find -- can make any of us a criminal in the

sense they can find some violation of some law. now they have been starting to do that. combined with the fact of the surveillance ability to know what everybody is up to, there seems to me there is a pending ability to be able to -- used the term blackmail -- or just kicking them out of the way and we see that interfering into the intellectual politics, where this sort of -- besides the question of disadvantaging certain groups from participating, we have releasing of information about unfavored candidates that are really privileged information or otherwise tying them up. and i'm wondering how -- that's part of the symptom here, but how would you put that into your equation in terms of overall the security in terms of if you tilt

the playing field with that -- the institutional ability and the institutional corrective of the -- people become incapacitated by disqualifying candidates. >> well, there's been a tendency for over a century for the government to multiply the details of its statutory restrictions and requirements and at the same time to build an immense regulatory state, and we now have a legal system in which laws are made without real consideration by legislators at all. they're simply regulations made by the members of regulatory commissions commissions and board and what have you, and there's a due process procedure for their doing so, and there's always supposed to be some underlying statutory basis for them, but they're very incentive and very

persistent. they work on this every day of the week. every bureau wants to have more regulations to enforce, gives it more power to bring about the state of the world for whatever reason, and also puts every person increasingly in the position you describe, where they can find that we are in violation in most cases of some felony restriction, and it doesn't take much at all. it can be then quite by accident. i noticed yesterday, standing in the los angeles airport, a big sign standing there, informing me of something i already knew but i was struck by it once again and that is that the u.s. law forbids anyone to enter or leave the united states with more than thousand in --

thousands in -- in $10,000 in currency, without reporting it, and failure to make those reports and to make them accurately, may result in the forfeiture of all your currency and your imprisonment. think about that. how easy might it be to be off by a dollar when you report the amount of money you're carrying. just any number of ways in which people can totally innocently -- and this is not just conjecture on my part. this has actually happened in regard to this rule in the past. people have had all of their money stolen by the government because they didn't correctly report the amount they had or they didn't fill out the forms properly. now, that's just one instance.

multiply that by about 400,000, and you have the world we live in. a world where we're all criminals. anytime prosecutors want to show we're criminals. historically there was a natural law that defined crimes. they were obvious things like murder, robbery, burglary. you can count them on your fingers the number of real crime that could be committed. that's still the case. but what we have now is this jungle of criminal requirements and prohibitions created by the state precisely so it can put the fear of god in everybody, bring them into full compliance with whatever it tells them to do, no matter how ridiculous it is, and no matter what real reason it has.

what is itmoney i carry across ? it's none of their damn business. how much -- what is their caring, somebody bringing into the country $12,000 in some currency? it's none of their damn business. why are they worrying about this? they want to enforce absurd rules on people who have harmed no one but who give them an opportunity to push their weight around and steal money from people who often innocently put themselves in violation of these ridiculous laws. but as you say, here we are now and the only way we can get out of this is by beginning to hack away at these laws and repeal them, one after another. repeal. not amend. not reform. repeal. make them go away.

disappear. >> or maybe just repeal them all and start all over with the natural laws. and then, of course, the really neat thing about having these databases with all of your phone calls and correspondence and everything else is -- the famous cardinal in the three musketeers said if you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men i will find something in them which will hang him. >> if i would just make a point about this regulatory state. very short point. it seems to me that -- i was talking about dividing and conquering. there are a lot of americans who have at least some skepticism of the criminal justice system. but they love regulations. the think any new regulation has to overall be good or if they don't think that, they think at

least their well-intentioned and think that generally regulations are the path to nor stability. there are other americans who are skeptical of the regulatory state but they're kind of blind to the horrors of the criminal justice system, its brutality, the inequity, the inhumanity that we see in it, and this is just one of the many case of cognitive dissidence where these people just don't get together and realize that the regulatory state and the criminal justice system are the same people and the regulatory state is enforced through the criminal justice system. that's all. >> good point. in the back? >> thank you. i want to thank the panel for really excellent discussion. it was reported tonight's "new

york times" that earlier in the day, deputy secretary of state ashton carter announced that the as -- aspen institute, the pentagon is about to deploy cyberdefense and offense troops, 4,000, under the command of general alexander, who also runs the national security seeing the u.s. cyber command. i was interested in your commentses commentses and the implications of that, particularly how the whole cyberdefense thing is punitively being constructed to defend us from threats from china but what the implications would be for everything you're talking about. thank you. >> i think in terms of any businesses, any businesses that depend heavily on the internet, which practically all of them do, they should pay for their own defense against

cybersecurity or cyber attacks or any of this. this is one more retext for more power and -- one more plea -- preticket for mother pore and there's no reason to think they'll do a good job on this. the boston bombing happened despite the surveillance state. and even if they multiplied the power of the surveillance state, such attacks can still happen. the threat -- there will always be people who can outsmart the system to do bad. specifically with terrorism, which of course is simply an act of violence that is available to any able bodied human being, and always has been. there's no way to stop this stuff. people need to get some perspective. so i would make no -- i don't know all the details about that,

but i have no reason to believe that it would be the one exception to the rule. >> i would wonder if it's really cyberdefense they're working on or more cyber offense they're developing to aim at other countries. in general, all the defense programs have that kind of symmetry built into them, and we do know it's a long-term state is part of the national defense posture that the armed forces require total spectrum.com nance, it's called so they control the land, the air and seas and they control space. and this fits into the vision of universal domination. it's almost the stuff of bad movies at this point. but nonetheless, it doesn't mean

they're not spending scores of billions of dollars every year, paying i.t. companies to dream up and deploy this kind of stuff. >> over here. >> though i embrace your cost motte -- cosmopolitism that liberty is not something just american it's global, and organizations like students for liberty feel the same. i feel compelled to play devil's advocate and as an american citizen, what threats do you think face this country and the government, legitimate threats, -- what legitimate threats to due county face the country and how might the government go about addressing those threats in a just way?

>> well, terrorism is a threat. it's a minuscule threat. it's almost statistically negligible but it exists, i believe, for the most part because the u.s. goes around thinking it owns the world and propping up dictators and overthrowing them, torturing people, drone bombing like in western pakistan, terrorizing and has made life hell on earth for those people. this kind of behavior makes people mad, and as long as the u.s. continues to do this, then the threat of terrorism, i'm confident, will be higher than it otherwise will be. i really don't see any way that the government can stop terrorism other than pulling out of these countries, declaring peace, and perhaps -- although

it would be disingenuous, going on a real apology tour. i don't think there's any way to stop people from sneaking things on planes. i mean, this is absurd. people can make molotov cocktails if they get the liquor. there are all kind of -- anyone who has any imagination at all can thick of -- think of how to unleash a horror that would take may -- many lives. people have access -- the government has been profiling and we see with the boston bombing with these white muslims have been quite the profiles, so you can try to widen the profile you are just going to widen it until it captures everything, and the state may have your information but it's not going to be able to comb it to stop the threats. maybe on the margins it's possible they'll stop something-but the majority of all these failed terror plots since 9/11 have involved fbi

informant where the fbi sends somebody to people to make this plan and then stop them before the plan is carried out there. are one 0 or two exceptions but this is just -- it's just -- the national security space is not protecting us. i don't think it can protect us. i think the only hope against the, again, rather trivial threat of terrorism -- it's not trivial if it impacts you or you lose someone in it but same with car accidents or people drowning in pools or any other horrible thing would happen. i know criminal, it's murderous, but there's threat of crime. there's no guarantee to pure safety. people need to get over that. there's no guarantee of pure security. but we do know that the state is attempting to move toward pure

control, and there's no possibility of pure control either. especially directed toward any good purpose. they can make life unbearable and make life much less free for all of us, but i think the time has passed beyond which americans should be even humoring this idea of, what do we do to get the government to protect us better? the time for that discussion was september, october, november, 2001. that was 12 years ago. the state blew its chance. it unleashed great horror. it destroyed more american lives than the terrorists have, and if it's true the terrorist hate us for our freedom, the state is conspiring with the terrorist, however inadvertently. there's no way the terrorists can take away our freedom. they can kill people, they can

destroy property but not nearly on the scale of the state, and when it comes to our liberties they nor match for government. this is osama bin laden's wildest dream, that the american people would do this to themselves. >> dianne feinstein claimed the nsa has prevented attacks. there's been no evidence that's the case, and tsa claims it stopped plots but there's been no evidence. and the one thing we do know historically is that the few would-be bombers and hijackers that have been stopped, have been stopped by fellow passengers. we can protect ourselves and we need to remember we have more power than we ever give ourselves credit for, and utilize it and we'll be far safer under that basis. so, one over there in then -- you can -- >> i'm particularly conflicted on this matter because i usually

like to evaluate both sides of an issue and when i attend events like this, i usually hear one side of it, and i would really like to hear you poke holes in the other side and i'd like to use this opportunity ask you a very specific question. ...

>> it would not be good security. if you tipoff the bad guys you won't find in that same way again. the hypothetical is -- >> at think you can reveal the you have stopped them without revealing how is done. they do it with murders in the newspaper every day. it will talk about certain things but not reveal all the details. >> we have a difference of opinion on that issue. the specific question i have is if hypothetically, and i'm not naive enough to think that all government workers have men and women of good faith as a primary goal. a lot of them just want to make their job pay off. assuming there are some good people there, if it were able to find out and have stopped nine or 11 incidents that we don't know about, how many of them would have to occur before you

would be willing to give up any of the individual freedoms that we are champing? >> i myself am not willing to give up any and all for the claims that they are protecting me or the promise to protect in the future. the reason for that is that i simply do not consider them credible sources. we know that they -- and we can document the ways in which they have lied again and again and again. the default position i take is that the government may be telling the truth, but i'm just calling to assume its line whenever it tells me something that i can't confirm. in the think i would be a damn fool to believe anything untold. it clearly serves the purpose as having succeeded in these kinds of protections. of what i think about, what it

takes to commit an act of terrorism that is so accessible to virtually any adult with an i.q. over 75 that the best that there has been, the incidents in this country tells me that damn few people must be trying to carry out terrorism. i could carry out some terrorism in the next few days if i set my mind to it. anybody can. is not that hard to do some kind of terrorism. this is a tactic. it can take a thousand different forms. if we don't see acts of terrorism, why in the world to we believe these boogieman, under our beds in great numbers? it does not make sense. it is incoherent as an argument. >> did you take into account that all the historical operations against the japanese code or the enigma machine which we did not find out about for 40 of 50 years after the fact.

i agree with you wholeheartedly, a single individual can do an act of terrorism. most of the restrictions are against good people. if there's a conspiracy among monitoring develops patterns. i'm wondering if we have enough information's to determine whether conspiracies have come out to prevent terrorist attacks in. >> i agree with you that it is conceivable that things are happening that we can know about certain pop that's why were complaining tonight. we don't have it. they shouldn't have it. the point is, we don't have all the information they have. so we can never say for certain they have never prevented a terrorist plot. but even if they have prevented one, even if they prevented 50, i still don't want them to take

any of my liberties away because it's a relatively trivial threat to me. in the broad spectrum of threats at the same time that nothing terrorism has been utterly alone out of all proportions by the scare tactics to govern is carried out, there have been genuine threats that continue to exist. the greatest threat this country ever faced was during the cold war. we are on a hair trigger opposition with the ussr. both sides with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, thousands of them on long range and intermediate range missiles, if even a small proportion of those were encased in an exchange of nuclear weapons, they would have destroyed the entire world. that was a real threat because

even if we were all the sweetest angels, there were accidents. accidents on several occasions very nearly triggered all-out nuclear war between the ussr and the united states. but the cold war is now over. but not really. pressure still has thousands of icbm site with nuclear weapons. operational, returnable in just a few minutes to any side in this country. if somehow things should deteriorate, technology should develop the glitch, we could have a devastating exchange of nuclear weapons. it is not at all of of of ronald possibility. about ten years ago there were actually a number of generals and admirals, about half and

half split between the former u.s.s.r. and the united states. they formed a group. they attempted to bring to the public's attention of the continuing danger of maintaining these weapons. and it was in the news for a short while, then it disappeared. these cats gave up in a desperation because no one paid any attention. the fact is, they still exist posing the greatest threat we can imagine the people all over the world and especially this country. so i was sorry people need to get their priorities straightened out. some terrorist with the bomb on an airplane is not even in the same universe with and exchange bake h bomb. >> one more question in the audience. i would just say my answer, if they can't keep me safe and

secure in my liberties, then i will fire them and hire somebody can. >> fourth amendment rights now starts with defining the zone of privacy by the expectation of privacy. it seems that our digital communications all start with checking the box that says rednecks out. the object of that box indicates we an agreement with the conduit or entity to is providing our digital carry indication. inevitably that agreement contains a very porous privacy policy. my question is, given that we have checked the box, par our digital communications protected by the fourth amendment? if the answer is yes, what is the argument? those additional communications are in fact protected by our

fourth amendment rights. >> my response would be that the way you pose that question really requires a lawyer who is an expert in that area of law. i'm not a lawyer with that kind of expertise. i would respond to the question differently. i don't care how an expert lawyer would answer your question. i don't want these people reading my e-mail. and if the people who serve me with the capability of sending you a message is are handing them over to the government, want them to stop. i want them to make clear that there not going to hand it over to the government. i want all carriers to make it clear they want and it over to the government, and i want all of us to make clear to the government officials that we want them to stop reading our dan e-mails. it is simply not something that has to be done.

they have a good reason to read somebody's e-mail if they have some evidence, if they can show cause so they could easily go to court and get a warrant to reach gary mills or like it any other considered private by virtue of having a court authorize them to do so. there rubberstamp tens of thousands of requests for this search every year. it's not hard. they can get it in just a matter of a few hours. so the fact that that does not satisfy them and they have instead to scoop up every single human being electronic communications tells me that they're thinking along different lines. they are not really concerned about going after somebody who for some possible reason might

be engaged in acts of terrorism or other criminal acts. there are just fishing and every poll. to me i just can't believe that they're doing this with good purpose. >> one thing i know, in the years between it was created as the foreign intelligence surveillance act that created discord within the justice department, not really the executive branch, but the years between then and 2001, they asked for 13 or 14,000 warrants and rejected zero. this was the restriction that bush and obama cannot put up with. and i agree. i will note that i think it is a mistake. this is not my primary interest, but if i'm going to play a legal team, i think it's a mistake to look at it just in terms of privacy, some kind of thing that we have.

the fourth amendment, like most of the bill of rights, is a prohibition on government conduct. so it does not matter what you do. it does not matter i'll open your about it. there are things that the state does not have the authority to do. first of all because it was not given the authority. second of all because in many cases it is specifically prohibited from engaging. so people open themselves up and really push their privacy. that still doesn't mean the state has a right. >> and i will take one that came in through the remote viewers. his former associates in the nsa that came out, three senior officers who among them have years of experience working for the nsa, all whistle-blowers, all trying to go through the official channels.

it could not give any traction on. they call edward snowden a hero. that's good enough for me. i want to thank everybody for being here. especially the is he who were here this evening. this is an incredibly important issue. probably nothing more important now. the information, we have a lot of content on the website, including many, many, many articles, analysis. a lot of information the you can take in use and share with your friends and hopefully in powerless. abolish this current state of affairs and have a much brighter

future. we hope to see you again soon. thank you and goodbye. [applause] >> who would like to hear from you. tweet us your feedback. twitter.com/booktv. >> you're watching book tv on c-span2. here is our prime time lineup for tonight.

>> here's some of the latest headlines around in the public to the publishing industry. author and political journalist died on wednesday, august 14th he spent 40 years in political journalism working at the baltimore sun and the washington star. he had just completed work on his forthcoming novel, a short story for page three shortly before his death. he appeared on book tv to discuss his book fat man in the middle seat, 40 years of covering politics. you can once that online and booktv.org. i wednesday and is on publishing announced a new biography series will be available through its